


so I don’t work in the skeleton room, but I’d like to bone you anyway

by driedupwishes



Category: Shingeki no Kyojin | Attack on Titan
Genre: Fluff, M/M, Modern AU, That's it that's literally it - Freeform, also hints of Jean/Marco, halloween haunted house au, levi pines and eren's cute
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-03
Updated: 2014-11-03
Packaged: 2018-02-23 23:16:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,306
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2559398
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/driedupwishes/pseuds/driedupwishes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Levi jerked, startled, fingers clenching awkwardly around the plastic package in his arms, but the kid was already twisting to get out of his way. Levi turned his head, caught by the moment, and in the next moment he almost stumbled and ate shit on the dirty tile floor, because <i>holy fucking shit, people that gorgeous existed in this fucking town?</i></p><p>The first thing that registered was the dark hair haphazardly styled, messy and wind-swept and long enough that it hung in front of eyes as green as the deepest parts of the forest. Levi wanted to tangle his fingers in that hair, to pull and to yank and to see if it was as fucking nice to touch as it looked. It registered a second later that the guy was tall and broad shouldered, skin tan and nose nice.</p><p><i>Nose nice</i>, Levi thought with a little bit of distant horror. <i>I just thought his fucking nose was nice, oh no.</i></p>
            </blockquote>





	so I don’t work in the skeleton room, but I’d like to bone you anyway

“Turn,” Hanji yelped suddenly, throwing their weight against the passenger door. “Turn, Levi, turn or you’ll miss it!”

Levi considered slamming on the breaks and wrenching the wheel, if just to see the idiot slam against their seatbelt, but he didn’t. “I’ve already missed it,” he gritted out, jaw clenched. He checked that there wasn’t anyone in the lane beside them, gassed the car over one lane, and then eased onto the break so that they slid into the left-hand turn lane, blinker on.

“Aw, Levi,” Hanji whined. “You could have made it easy.”

“You may have a death wish, shitface,” Levi muttered, “but I don’t.”

Hanji sighed from the other side of the car, deflating back into their seat. Arms crossed, hair covering the side of their face that Levi could see out of the corner of his eye, Hanji slumped like a sullen teenager.

“You used to,” they muttered, low and soft. Levi opted to ignore that, because he was past the point in his life where he could be riled into a fight while driving a car. He still took the U-turn too fast, slamming the unprepared shithead against the passenger door as hard as he could, because past that point in his life or not, if you talked shit then you got hit.

Hanji, like the fucking freak they were, laughed as they slammed against the car door, engine revving at the tip of their toes. “That’s more like it, Levi,” they cheered and Levi tried not to smile at that, honestly, but he couldn’t help it.

“Shut up, shitface,” he muttered, pulling into the middle lane. He eyed the building that was housing the haunted house Hanji had been working at for years, having had no reason to be dragged out to it in the previous years. There wasn’t a lot of traffic coming the other way, so it wasn’t like it was hard to pull into the parking lot of the place, shifting the car into park.

“Alright,” Levi said. “Out.”

Hanji’s laughter was bright and loud as they clamored about reaching into the back seat without getting out of the car. Levi rolled his eyes and slouched back in the car seat, finger drumming aimlessly as Hanji wriggled and mumbled under their breath. It would have been easier for them to climb out of the car and open the back door, but Hanji was hardly ever not a complete pain in the ass, so it wan’t like their actions were surprising.

“You’re going to go get me some water, right?”

“Hm,” Levi hummed. Hanji twisted around, nose crinkled as their glasses slipped down to give Levi a clear shot of their shit brown eyes. He sighed.

“Yes,” he said, before they could say anything. “I’m going to go get you a package of water bottles.”

Hanji’s answering smile was wide, stretching from ear to ear and bright like a fucking new light bulb. Levi rolled his eyes and reached over to shove at the idiot, muttering, “get out of my car,” under his breath. Hanji chirped in reply, more bird-sound than word, and then scrambled out of the car and into the parking lot. Levi didn’t bother to wait for the idiot go into the building, putting the car into reverse and swinging back onto the road, head craned around to check traffic. Ten minutes later Levi was parking in the same exact spot he had just pulled out of with a twenty-four package of water bottles sitting in the passenger seat instead of a stupid glasses-wearing shithead. He got out of the car, loosening his tie a bit and sighing when his steps kicked dust onto the edge of his dress pants.

“Fucking Hanji,” Levi muttered. He rolled up his shirt sleeves as he walked around the car, pulling open the door and stooping to lift the surprisingly light package into his arms. He kicked the door closed and then made his way to the side door, where Hanji had disappeared when he had dropped them off. He followed their path absently, thoughts wandering the direction of what the fuck he was going to do for dinner, which meant that by the time he got to the door he was completely unprepared for the person who appeared all of a sudden.

“Hi,” someone said and Levi swallowed against the knee jerk reaction to lash out. The guy seemed to notice, because he chuckled lightly, holding up his hands. “Sorry about that, I didn’t mean to scare you.”

“You didn’t scare me,” Levi bit out. The guy in front of him was freckle faced, with dark hair and a fucking button nose. Levi didn’t like him, but that also had to do with the fact that he was like six fucking foot. Why did people feel the need to be so fucking tall?

Fucking Freckles just smiled, lop sided and kind. Levi wondered why he was working in a haunted house when he looked like a couple of twelve year olds could make him cry.

“Do you need help with something?”

“Hanji,” Levi sighed, feeling like he should have run the idiot over with his car when they’d asked him for a ride to the haunted house. “They asked me to bring them this water?”

“Oh,” Fucking Freckles said, eyes widening. “I actually don’t know where Hanji is?” He managed to make his statement sound like a question.

 _Oh_ , Levi thought. _That’s fucking great._

“Mind if I just shout then,” Levi asked, half sarcastic. He didn’t really want to wander around with a fucking case of water looking for the shithead if he could help it, because the building was literally a maze and he didn’t have time for that shit. He regretted asking, however, when Fucking Freckles shrugged aimlessly, still smiling.

“Sure,” he said, “go ahead.”

Levi wasn’t sure, but that almost sounded like a challenge. Like the kid thought he wouldn’t be able to find Hanji just by shouting. Levi hadn’t backed down from a challenge in more years than Fucking Freckles had been alive, so he rolled his eyes, shifted the package of water bottles in his arms, and breathed in deep.

“Hey, fucking shithead,” he yelled, “come get your fucking water.”

Fucking Freckles blinked at him and opened his mouth to say something, but from the other side of the warehouse building someone shouted, “Levi!”

Fucking Freckles’ face did something where it looked like he was suddenly, embarrassingly constipated and Levi swallowed back a laugh that wouldn’t have been nice at all. He also refrained from asking what the kid had expected, because if Fucking Freckles was surprised by Hanji’s answering shout he certainly hadn’t had the chance to spend several long hours in their company.

Levi had been on road trip with Hanji once. He had threatened to get a plane ticket back home no less than twenty-three times and only hadn’t because it would have meant Hanji would have driven his car back. That had been a few years ago and Hanji, if it were possible, had only gotten stranger as time went on.

“Uh,” Fucking Freckles said. “I guess they’re back there?”

“No shit,” Levi said. “But where the fuck is back there?”

“Back door,” someone around the corner said. They stuck their head around the corner, making a face. It was some idiot with two colors in his hair, blonde and dark brown, and when he spotted Fucking Freckles his cheeks went a little pink. Levi wanted to bash his own head in rather than stand there, so with a grunt he drew the attention back to the problem at hand.

“And the back door is where?”

“Oh,” Fucking Freckles said, jumping a little bit. His cheeks were pink too. Levi wanted to vomit. Stupid kids and their stupid crushes. “Right, this way then, I’ll take you back there!”

Two-toned Hair had vanished back around the corner without a word, so Fucking Freckles led him through the doorway without incident. Levi bit back another sigh as he followed him through a portion of the dark maze, zoning out the sound of the boy’s voice as he started to prattle on about their set up for the night. There wasn’t a polite way to say that he didn’t give two fucking shits about how the haunted house was run and if Hanji got wind that he was being rude to any of their ‘little ghouls’ in the haunted house he’d never hear the end of it, so he bit his tongue and kept walking. They made their way through the maze, turned a corner, crossed a rickety set of ramps, and finally entered the mad scientist lab.

Since Hanji was the mad scientist Levi had heard all about this particular room for several years. He wasn’t that impressed to be in the room, but if Hanji asked later he’d say he liked the clutter on the lab table. It was very mad scientist, he thought, twisting to follow Fucking Freckles around the corner.

It would have worked better if someone hadn’t been trying to come around that same corner from the other side, though.

Levi jerked, startled, fingers clenching awkwardly around the plastic package in his arms, but the kid was already twisting to get out of his way. Levi turned his head, caught by the moment, and in the next moment he almost stumbled and ate shit on the dirty tile floor, because _holy fucking shit, people that gorgeous existed in this fucking town?_

The first thing that registered was the dark hair haphazardly styled, messy and wind-swept and long enough that it hung in front of eyes as green as the deepest parts of the forest. Levi wanted to tangle his fingers in that hair, to pull and to yank and to see if it was as fucking nice to touch as it looked. It registered a second later that the guy was tall and broad shouldered, skin tan and nose nice.

 _Nose nice_ , Levi thought with a little bit of distant horror. _I just thought his fucking nose was nice, oh no._

It didn’t help that as the guy was disappearing around the corner his eyes met Levi’s and his lips quirked up into a grin, wide and bright like sunshine itself. Levi stumbled, but he managed to not eat shit as the kid disappeared back the way they had come. The rest of the trip to the back door of the haunted house was spent in a kind of haze, because Levi’s knees felt weak and his chest felt funny and all he could see in his mind was green eyes and tan skin and dark hair.

If Hanji noticed anything they didn’t say shit, which Levi was grateful for. He ended up winding his way back through the haunted house, peeking around each corner for the boy with the green eyes. He didn’t see him, which made his stomach do something it hadn’t done in a fucking age.

“Fuck,” he muttered as he slammed his car door shut. He didn’t even start the car at first, staring blankly at the steering wheel as his heart beat double time. He pulled out his phone from his pocket, flipped it open, and then hit the third speed-dial button on his phone before tucking it under his ear. He started the car, distracted, eyes scanning the outside of the haunted house and he hated himself for it. He was already on the road by the time the person on the other end of the phone picked up.

“Help,” he said immediately, “there’s something wrong with me.”

“Hello to you too, Levi,” Erwin said. It sounded like he had him on speakerphone, which made Levi twitch.

“Take me off speakerphone,” he snapped, “this is serious.”

There was the muted sound of something shuffling around and then Erwin’s sigh came like static over the call, loud and close in Levi’s ear. Levi switched lanes, blinker only flicked on a second before he moved the car over, because he was dying, he was absolutely and utterly dying.

“So,” Erwin said. He didn’t fucking say anything else, which was annoying, as it always was. It was like he was waiting for Levi to crack, but Levi wasn’t about to fucking crack.

“Fuck you,” Levi snapped and he hung up the phone. He ended up driving home with his phone in the foot-well of the passenger seat, gritting his teeth in an effort to ignore its buzzing. He didn’t answer it until he was home, sprawled across his couch with his tie thrown onto the coffee table in a limp pile of cloth.

Erwin’s laughter was the first thing he heard. He considered hanging up the phone again, but he didn’t.

“Erwin,” he said warningly. “Don’t fucking do this to me.”

“Sorry,” the blonde apologized, but Levi knew he wasn’t really. “Honestly I didn’t expect you to hang up the phone, so go ahead, tell me, what’s going on?”

Levi didn’t know what to say, so he said the first thing to come to mind. If he’d known it would have ended with Erwin laughing so hard that Levi hung up the phone again in a fit, he would have kept his goddamn mouth shut.

“Sorry,” Erwin apologized again, after having to call four more times before Levi would pick up the phone. “Honestly, I am very sorry, Levi, but how was I supposed to know you were going to say, ‘I wanted to ask him his opinion on koalas and tree climbing’?”

Levi would deny that his face was red and hot for the rest of his fucking life, so help him God. But in his fucking defense what else was he supposed to say when the brat had been broad shouldered and tall, like the fucking gods had blessed him to be the best thing to climb in the entire fucking world? The koala thing was a little weird, Levi would admit, but it had been the first animal that latched onto trees that he could think of. Sloths would have been worse, though, so he was a little glad he hadn’t said that.

“This friendship is terminated, please have a nice life,” Levi bit out, thumb already moving to hang up the call again. He hadn’t hung up the phone on one person so much in the span of an hour before in his life, but it didn’t matter. Nothing mattered except the afterimage of green eyes and that quirked smile that still lingered behind his eyes.

He didn’t hang up the phone though, but only because this time Erwin managed not to laugh.

“Levi,” Erwin said and Levi scowled at his fridge, angry and agitated. “Honestly, calm down, it’s going to be alright. So you have a crush on this boy, so what?”

“No,” Levi said, feeling stubborn, “I do not have a fucking crush.” He hadn’t fucking felt like this in more years than he could even recall, but one fucking quirked up smile from a stupid dark haired kid in passing had him wound tighter than a fucking constipated asshole. But Erwin wouldn’t shut up and the blonde asswipe steamrolled on as if Levi wasn’t dragging his heels into this conversation with the absolute opposite of enthusiasm.

An hour later Levi was still staring at his fridge, face scrunched up into confusion and horror.

“Erwin,” he said, voice strained. “I’m not asking him if he likes cheese!”

Levi could practically hear Erwin’s shrug. “For the record, that wasn’t a serious suggestion,” the blonde defended. Levi made a face like that, because it that wasn’t a serious suggestion it was the worst fucking joke in the world. “It was just an ice breaker.”

Levi imagined putting his fist through the other man’s throat and then stuffing the hole his fist left behind full of cheese. The image didn’t help calm him down any, but it did sort of block out the memory of tan skin and broad shoulders. For at least, like, three seconds. Then the image was back, along with the tug in his gut and the thud in his heart, which was so fucking annoying, heaven help him.

“Levi,” Erwin prompted.

“No,” Levi responded. “Please forget I said anything. I’m going to stick my head in my own freezer or scrub the bathroom or maybe see if I can survive the fall from my building’s roof until Hanji calls me to go get their dumb ass.”

Erwin audibly swallowed his laughter in such a way that Levi knew he was supposed to hear the mirth underneath the bodily function. Levi regretted every fucking life choice that had lead him to this moment and hung up the phone. This time it stayed quiet for half an hour, in which Levi made himself some dinner and then stared at it until he wasn’t hungry.

The text-tone chime was a familiar enemy. Levi gritted his teeth and looked at the message anyway.

 _As long as you don’t let him know you have the soul of a sixty year old man, you should be fine_ , was the oh so helpful fucking advice from what was now his ex-closest friend. He would have to tell Hanji that they had moved up in the world once he picked them up. They would be ecstatic, he was sure.

“Go fuck yourself,” Levi said aloud. He left the text unanswered, mostly because Erwin wasn’t completely wrong and he honestly did hate typing everything out, but also partially because he had decided sometime in between his second and fifth bite of dinner that he was actually going to go scrub the bathroom like he had threatened to do.

The green eyed brat wasn’t there when Hanji texted him to come get them. Levi told himself it didn’t matter and ignored Erwin’s text about it the next morning. But then the brat wasn’t around the next day, or the next day, or the next, and then, like a fucking miracle, Halloween was over.

The haunted house experience, however, was not.

“You’re sure you’re going to be fine,” Levi asked. It wasn’t the first time he’d asked, but two people had been hit by cars during the previous nights and several people had gotten hit or injured inside the house as well. The police and fire department were apparently becoming annoyed with having to come out to one place so often.

Hanji just scoffed and flicked their hair out of their face energetically. “Pffft, Levi, please, I will be fine!”

“It’s lights out night,” Levi said, “and last year someone almost broke your nose.”

Lights out night was the night after Halloween, the last night of the haunted house experience from hell. Next week Hanji’s car would be fixed and they wouldn’t need any more rides and next week Levi could put the idea of accidentally running into the green eyed brat of a god out of his fucking head forever.

“Oh Levi,” Hanji laughed, bouncy and bright and Levi wanted to put his fist through their face in a fond sort of way, honestly. “Don’t worry about me, alright? I’ll be fine. The danger is part of the fun of working in the haunt with my little ghouls!”

Levi rolled his eyes and shoved the car in park. He didn’t let himself scan the parking lot for the boy who wouldn’t be there, just as he hadn’t let himself for the past two days. Eventually he would move on from this madness, he was sure.

“Get out of my car,” he said finally, slumping his head against the headrest of his car seat. “And you better fucking use those glow sticks or I’ll make you eat them until your shit glows for the rest of your fucking life.”

There was something strange about Hanji’s laughter, but Levi couldn’t place his finger on it. “Of course, Levi,” they said, the car door opening with a soft noise. Levi resisted the urge to flinch, because the temperature had dropped twenty fucking degrees since Monday and it was unreal how fucking cold it was, only the first of November.

“And stay fucking warm, you lunatic,” he added, but Hanji just continued to snicker and slammed the door. Levi considered backing them over with his car, but in the end he was too tired to move. He reached over to the cup holder and picked up his phone, barely paying attention as Hanji started to shout for someone as they bounded toward the side door. Hanji and their shit tastes might have been able to stand the public radio, but Levi needed something else or he was going to rip out his hair.

Just as he found the app for the music player there was a rap on his window, three taps and a slightly heavier thud.

“Hanji,” he said, too busy scrolling through the music player to look up immediately. “If you need me to get you more water I swear I will beat your fucking face in until you shit out your own organs.”

“Um,” someone said, voice deep and smooth and _shit_ -

Levi tried his fucking hardest not to gape like a fucking dumbass, because standing outside his car, shoulders hunched like a fucking shy puppy dog, was the green eyed, brown haired, tan skinned motherfucking brat he’d been losing his fucking mind over for the past week.

 _Cheese_ , was all he could think for a moment. _Do you like cheese?_

“Hi,” the guy said, waving awkwardly. He had dark make-up smudged around his eyes and a mask clutched in the hand swinging in that wave that was making Levi’s heart skip like a stupid fucking school girl who hadn’t learned how to avoid cracks and not trip over her own two fucking shoes.

Levi was incredibly glad that people who could read minds didn’t actually fucking exist, because he was a mess right then. But he cleared his throat and hit the button to roll down his window, swallowing a little more roughly than normal when the boy leaned down to rest his forearms on the edge of the car door.

“Hello,” Levi said, as calmly as he could. He was rewarded with another quirk of the boy’s lips, and this close to him Levi could see that his eyes weren’t entirely green, but speckled blue too, like some kind of trippy piece of shit modern art exhibit that Levi wanted to stand in front of for hours so that he had time to figure out the color’s name.

“You’re, uh, Hanji’s friend, right,” the boy said. He tilted his head and the pieces of hair that weren’t bound at the back of his nape in a pony tail slid across his cheeks.

Levi thought about how awkward it would be if he suddenly shoved his hands under his thighs. It would be pretty awkward, but he couldn’t figure out if it would be more or less awkward than touching the stranger’s hair to see how it felt.

“Yeah,” he said, only a second too slow to seem normal. “I’m a friend of the shithead in the glasses.” He cleared his throat, glancing at the back seat to see if maybe Hanji had forgotten something. He opened his mouth to ask if they had, but before he could someone back in the building shouted something and the boy jerked.

“Fuck,” the boy mumbled, pulling back a little bit to glance over his shoulder. Levi caught a glimpse of his neck, pretty skin so unblemished, and he wanted to change that.

He also wanted to run himself over with his own car. Running himself over with the car sounded more possible than him actually getting a chance to taste the boy in front of him, but he’d never hear the end of it if he ended up living through the experience, and that would just be too much of a pain.

“Did Hanji forget something,” Levi asked, dragging his eyes away from the brat’s neck. The dark haired, green eyed demon from the darkest pits of Hell that had been sent to Earth to torment Levi whirled around so fast he almost lost his footing, his forehead coming within an inch of smacking into the top of the window frame.

“Nope,” he said, cheeks going pink. “I, uh, actually kinda, uh- I wanted to, like- Um!”

Stuttering wasn’t cute, Levi reminded himself sternly. Stuttering was annoying and unfortunate. Stuttering wasn’t fucking cute.

“Oh holy shit,” the boy said, cheeks turning an even more appealing shade of pink. “This is actually the most terrifying thing I’ve ever done. And I’ve been working at this haunted house since I was sixteen, so that’s saying something, but, like, fuck, I don’t know, you’re gorgeous and I wanted to know if you like coffee?”

The question felt like it was a blade jammed in between Levi’s top ribs, stabbing straight into his heart. It also felt like someone had dumped fucking lava on his insides, because heat was flaring through his limbs at such a rate he wasn’t even aware of the frigid weather any more. But more keenly felt than all of that was the flush of delicious relief that swept through him, as unbelievable as a fucking snowman in the fucking Bahamas.

“Oh god,” the brat said suddenly, making Levi realize he hadn’t fucking said anything. “Fuck, never mind, this was a terrible idea, you’re not interested, Hanji was just messing with me, fuck, okay, sorry I’ll-“

Levi reached out, having to push against his seat belt to grab the retreating figure. “Hold the fuck up,” he said, pulling the brat back down until their heads were level again. Green-blue, like the sea in a whacked out painting from the 19th century; he needed a name for that color and maybe he’d have the time to come up with one.

“Thank you for not asking me about cheese,” Levi said, feeling giddy and stupid and not giving a fucking shit. The boy’s confusion was obvious, but Levi only laughed, fingers curled even tighter in the material of the brat’s shirt. He hoped like hell the boy’s sixteen birthday had been ages ago, but for once in his goddamn life things looked like they were truly, honestly going his way.

“Cheese,” the brat muttered, nose crinkling adorably as he spoke. “Why would I ask you about cheese?”

“Not fucking sure, but apparently it was supposed to be an icebreaker I could use on you next time I saw you. But since you offered, coffee sounds way fucking better.”

It took a second for his words to register, but when they did the god-like being in Levi’s grip light up like a fucking firework show, eyes popping wide. His sunshine smile was brighter than anything else Levi had ever seen and more welcoming than the prospect of cleaning the kitchen and having a warm drink, which was what Levi had been planning on doing with his night.

“Oh my god,” the brat said, which reminded Levi that he didn’t even know this kid’s name, fucking shit-

“Levi,” he interrupted, heart rampaging in his chest. The brat drew up short, lashes fluttering over his pretty eyes. His smile was smaller and softer this time, but no less brilliant, no less breath-taking.

“Eren,” he mumbled, shy and quiet, and Levi had never wanted to devour anyone so much in his life. He also hadn’t ever felt the feeling where he wanted to know what Eren would say at four am, when Levi couldn’t sleep and instead made toast and tea. It was an odd feeling, sharp around the edges and raw in the center, but with Eren’s smile so close he couldn’t bring himself to mind it.

“Well, Eren,” Levi started to say, but Two-Toned Haired burst out of the building, Fucking Freckles on his heels, and interrupted the whole fucking moment thing they had going on.

“Eren,” Two-Toned Hair snapped, but Fucking Freckles skidded to a stop, a look of embarrassed horror washing across his face. Levi twitched a little bit, his own cheeks heating up while Eren tried his best to stumble back, only to draw short because Levi hadn’t let go of him yet.

Levi wasn’t really interested in letting go of Eren, but he did so, sullenly and slowly, making sure the dark haired brat knew he was reluctant about it. Eren made a noise in the back of his throat, cheeks so impossibly red that it looked like it hurt a little bit, and in the background Fucking Freckles grabbed Two-Tone Hair and dragged him back inside with a yelp.

“I’m going to kill Jean,” Eren muttered and Levi couldn’t give a fucking shit which one of them was Jean, but he agreed wholeheartedly. Eren then turned back around and when his eyes met Levi’s he smiled again, like he couldn’t fucking help it. Levi knew the feeling, even though it felt like his chest was going to fucking explode in a matter of goddamn seconds.

“I gotta go,” Eren mumbled, apparently just as reluctant as Levi. “But, uh, can I have your number? For the, uh, for the coffee thing?”

Levi swallowed roughly and gathered every ounce of courage he’d ever had in the fucking world. “Date,” he corrected, a little forcefully. “Not thing.”

Eren looked fit to shit himself. “Date,” he repeated, a little dazed. “Hell yeah.”

“Give me your phone,” Levi said, arm extended out toward the brat. But when Eren reached in his pocket the brat’s gorgeous face crumpled into horror.

“Oh my god,” Eren said. “My phone’s in my jacket, that’s where I put it when I ride on my bike, shit, fuck, I’m so sorry, if you’ll wait a moment I can-“

Levi couldn’t help but laugh, relaxing into the car seat. His heart finally seemed to calm down enough for him to notice how fucking cold it was again and he retracted his arm inside the car with a shiver.

“Go ask Hanji for my number,” he said, trying not to pray that the bike Eren was referring to was a motorcycle, because that would be really fucking hot and he might actually have a heart attack at that point. Eren perked up, grinning crookedly, and Levi couldn’t help but grin stupidly right back at him.

“Okay,” Eren said, in a rushed sort of way. He started to stumble back a few steps, eyes bright like beacons surrounded by that dark makeup. “I’ll text you!”

Levi didn’t even mention how much he hated texting. He’d learn how to fucking chat speak if it meant getting to know Eren better.

– One year later –

Levi woke up to the feeling of the bed dipping. He shivered when the covers being pulled back let the cold air creep across his skin and he was trying to pull back from the cold when he registered the warm, clean smell of the person climbing into the bed. There was groggy confusion weighing down his thoughts as he blinked open his eyes, but the dim light from the digital clock on the bedside table was enough for him to recognize the familiar lines of the body wriggling against his.

“Ngh,” Levi mumbled, reaching up to rub at his eyes. He was still in his clothes, though when he moved his left foot he realized he was missing a sock. “Eren?”

“Oops,” Eren mumbled. The brat loomed over him suddenly, eyes glinting in the darkness, before he pressed a kiss to Levi’s cheek, dry and soft. “Sorry; didn’t mean to wake you up.”

“S’okay,” Levi mumbled. Eren was still wriggling, fighting with the covers or something, so Levi kept his distance. He rubbed at his face with one hand while he kicked the other sock off, not particularly caring for once if it got tangled and lost between their sheets. “What time is it?”

“Uh. Three? Ish? House ran really late tonight,” Eren said, half explanation, half excuse. He pressed another kiss to Levi’s face, this time closer to his lips, and his breath was warm and damp, like the rest of him. Eren was always careful to shower directly after coming home from the haunt, knowing how much Levi hated the grime he collected while working there.

Something warm feeling flopped around his chest at the thought that Eren had bothered to take a shower and scrub away the smell of sweat and costume make-up off himself before sleeping, despite having been on his feet working for at least five hours, maybe six. That feeling only grew more rampant as Eren moved closer, heat radiating off his body like the inhuman furnace Levi accused him of being.

“If I’d known you were staying up until I got back, I’d have texted you ages ago,” Eren continued. This kiss landed on the corner of Levi’s mouth, the younger man’s chapped lips pressing against the little upturn as he smiled sleepily at the words. Even addled by sleep Levi appreciated that Eren wasn’t rubbing it in his face, that he hadn’t been able to stay away to actually welcome him home. It made him love the brat all the more.

“Aw, shucks,” Eren mumbled, curling down so that his face was pressed up against Levi’s, his nice, round, tanned nose bumping against the sharp pale one Levi had had on his face all his life. “I love you too, old man.”

“Sleep words don’t count,” Levi argued sluggishly, pulling back to try and glare down the younger man. Eren’s eyelids were already heavy with the promise of sleep, but that didn’t stop him from beaming, ear to ear like a damn fool. Levi groaned at the sight, too tired to hate how his chest swelled with affection. It didn’t help that Eren looked so inviting in that moment, shirtless and warm, wet hair gleaming in the dark and messily tucked behind his ear.

The sight of Eren like that certainly didn’t help when Levi decided that he couldn’t fall asleep in his jeans and shirt again. The squeak of protest Eren made as Levi pushed back their covers and sat up pulled a sleepy chuckle out of him, but he couldn’t help but wince against the cold as he pulled off his shirt. It was too cold to sleep without the heater on, but the heater was too far away and Levi was much too lazy to bother with it. He and Eren would have to get by on body heat and extensive cuddling.

 _Oh however will we live_ , Levi thought, smiling stupidly once more. He let the shirt drop off the edge of the bed and then twisted around, making sure that Eren hadn’t rolled into his spot when he sat up.

The clock’s time read 3:56am. Levi might have throttled the idiot for purposefully hiding how fucking late it was, but the fact that the brat was worried about worrying him made him stupid. Love, to be honest, was something that made him stupid, but he liked it. He especially liked it when he was able to flop back, arms splayed, and have the sound of Eren’s laughter linger in his ears.

“Take off your pants already,” Eren complained. He was hunched inside himself, curled against the cold, and Levi couldn’t resist rolling over to press a kiss against his shoulder. The younger man was covered in goose flesh, the little bumps along his skin making Levi want to kiss him again and again and again.

“Pants,” Eren said again, but he was grinning, eyes that Levi still didn’t have a name for the color crinkled shut in the dark, and Levi rolled back over to kick off his pants. The button on his jeans took longer than it should, but eventually the pants joined his shirt on the floor, where he would inevitably trip on them come morning. Levi didn’t care, however, because it meant he was free to pull the covers back up and curl against Eren’s warmth, which was what he tried to do.

Eren, however, had already been in motion.

Levi had been aiming to curl down against Eren’s chest, tuck his head under the brat’s chin, and then let the steady heartbeat under his ear lull him to sleep. Eren had apparently been possessed with the same sort of plan, because they both ended up wriggling down into their covers, leaving their pillows behind as they each tried to get far enough down on the bed to use the other’s chest as a pillow instead. Levi froze upon realizing what was happening, some of the grogginess disappearing as he realized how ridiculous he was being, but Eren was either too tired to notice or didn’t care. Immediately the broader shouldered man was pressing forward, rolling against Levi and tangling their legs together as his wet hair brushed against Levi’s skin. Shivers raced the length of Levi’s spine, but then Eren’s arms were winding around his back, two pillars of warmth against the cold world outside their bed, and Levi found himself winding his own arms around Eren’s shoulders comfortably.

Eren placed one last sloppy, dry kiss against Levi’s chest, right over his heart, before he relaxed completely. And Levi would have felt dumb for it a year before, but he carded his hand up into Eren’s wet hair and curled down around the gorgeous tanned skin idiot, pressing a matching kiss to the top of the brat’s head.

“I fucking love you,” Levi whispered to his sleeping boyfriend, proving that love could make anyone a sap and a fool. Then he let the familiar grasp of sleep pull him back under its spell, content in a way that burrowed deep inside him bones.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm really anxious and embarrassed about this, because I basically wrote this b/c I was dropping water off to my roommate at the haunted house she works at and saw this gorgeous guy and like, swooned so fucking hard??? And when I was arguing about it later, telling my friends that no, I wasn't going to talk to him, I was probably never going to see him again anyway (I didn't), I threw out, "I'm going to make this into a fic so that someone can live out my happily ever after b/c yes, I am that kind of sad person rn leave me alone."
> 
> As you can see, I did.
> 
> Anyway, I've never written ereri before and I'm super nervous about it, so I'm just going to go like crawl under a blanket and shit. I hope someone out there enjoyed this!


End file.
